Humorists Quotes

First, I was an idealist (that was early - fools are born, not made, you know); next I was a realist; now I am a pessimist, and, by Jove! if things get much worse I'll become a humorist.

If there's anything I hate it's the word humorist-I feel like countering with the word seriousist.

[ I'm] humorist, I guess. Or really more of a reporter. A reporter who reports on funny things.

I did not intend to write a funny book, at first. I did not know I was a humorist. I have never been sure about it. In the middle ages, I should probably have gone about preaching and got myself burnt or hanged.

Humor is, I think, the subtlest and chanciest of literary forms. It is surely not accidental that there are a thousand novelists, essayists, poets or journalists for each humorist. It is a long, long time between James Thurbers.

There aren't many political humorists. Dave Barry is excellent, but he doesn't do it much.

Don't let schooling interfere with your education.

There are people who can talk sensibly about a controversial issue; they're called humorists.

All of us contain Music & Truth, but most of us can't get it out.

When a comic becomes enamored with his own views and foists them off on the public in a polemic way, he loses not only his sense of humor but his value as a humorist.

I am a comedian but it's usually not a compliment to be called a prop comedian but I guess I sometimes use props. And I always confuse humorist with comedian. That's strange.

If I get big laughs, I'm a comedian. If I get little laughs, I'm a humorist. If I get no laughs, I'm a singer.

If your regime is not strong enough to handle a joke, then you don't have a regime.

Life isn't something you possess. It's something you take part in, and you witness.

Americans are getting stronger. Twenty years ago, it took two people to carry ten dollars' worth of groceries. Today, a five-year-old can do it.

I find a duck's opinion of me is very much influenced by whether or not I have bread.

Every person you look at, you can see the universe in their eyes, if you're really looking

Maybe this is crazy, but I think the right to own a gun is trumped by the right not to be shot by one.

Until you go to Kentucky and with your own eyes behold the Derby, you ain't never been nowhere and you ain't seen nothin'!

When the public starts classifying you as thoughtful, someone given to serious issues, you find yourself declassified as a humorist.

The key, I would say to any fledgling humorist starting out, is to make sure that sloppiness is part of your recipe. That way they come to expect fumbling and clumsiness and they say, "Oh, it must be a charming part of his personality."

The proverb says, "Born lucky, always lucky," and I am very superstitious. As a small boy I was notoriously lucky. It was usual for one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned condition 9 times before I learned to swim, and was considered to be a cat in disguise.

Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.

Weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless.

I don't want to be classed as a humorist. It makes me feel guilty. I've never read a good tough quotable female humorist, and I never was one myself. I couldn't do it. A "smartcracker" they called me, and that makes me sick and unhappy. There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.

I am only human, although I regret it.

Being made merely in the image of God but not otherwise resembling him enough to be mistaken by anybody but a very near sighted person.

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living.

The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

Once I talked to the inmates of an insane asylum in Hartford. I have talked to idiots a thousand times, but only once to the insane.

A religion that comes of thought, and study, and deliberate conviction, sticks best. The revivalized convert who is scared in the direction of heaven because he sees hell yawn suddenly behind him, not only regains confidence when his scare is over, but is ashamed of himself for being scared, and often becomes more hopelessly and malignantly wicked than he was before.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

ZANY, n. A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with ludicrous incompetence the _buffone_, or clown, and was therefore the ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters of the play. The zany was progenitor to the specialist in humor, as we to-day have the unhappiness to know him. In the zany we see an example of creation; in the humorist, of transmission. Another excellent specimen of the modern zany is the curate, who apes the rector, who apes the bishop, who apes the archbishop, who apes the devil.

I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

Russell Brand has announced that he plans to write a series of children's books. First up: 'Horton Hears a Heroin Dealer.'

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

America cannot have an empire abroad and a Republic at home.

Humor is really one of the hardest things to define, very hard. And it's very ambiguous. You have it or you don't. You can't attain it. There are terrible forms of professional humor, the humorists' humor. That can be awful. It depresses me because it is artificial. You can't always be humorous, but a professional humorist must. That is a sad phenomenon.

Six Secrets to Being a Successful Humorist 1. Be scared, unhappy, and an outcast as a kid. 2. Drop out of high school. 3. Spend time alone. 4. Don't take a comedy course. 5. Read other humorists but don't worship them. 6. Don't get your hopes up.

Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called everybody, and they meet at the bar.

Alas! those good old days are gone, when a murderer could wipe the stain from his name and soothe his trouble to sleep simply by getting out his blocks and mortar and building an addition to a church.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

Life is a cruel, horrible joke and I am the punch line.

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

Success in life has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It's what you do for others.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.